Value of a good doesn't necessarily equate to the end cost of the good. It's a factor, but I have the right to set whatever price I want on an item. Your only right as a consumer is to buy or not buy it. That's it.
Slight correction. Asking price is what you mean, not value. And yes, the asking price is only influenced by manufacturing cost insofar that the cost establishes the minimum asking price (barring any cross financing), since selling below would mean that not producing is more sensible. The customer assesses the value of a product and compares the value he attributes to the product with the asking price. If the value I give a good or service is higher than the asking price, I buy. If it isn't, I don't.
This is a shit example. That diamond in that wedding ring (or any modern one) costs the De Beers company a handful of dollars. They sell it to you for vast sums more. They do this partially by artificially restricting the availability of natural diamonds, calling lab created diamonds less valuable, and telling women that your man doesn't love you if he doesn't give you a piece of a shiny rock - specifically the TYPE of rock that De Beers says is valuable.
Again, value is what the potential buyer gives a good or service. You, as the seller, try to find an asking price that allows for the maximum profit without going over the value the buyer attributes to the item, because if you ask for more than he considered it worth, he will not buy. Whether I (or for the matter DeBeers) says it's valuable means jack shit if the buyer doesn't see it that way. DeBeers apparently managed to convince people that the value they pretend those rocks to have is correct, so people now attribute that value to those rocks. Actually, it's even likely that DeBeers, as the seller, considers the rocks less valuable, or they would not want to sell them at the price they offer them at.
They understand it. They also understand anonymous VPNs, TOR, shared network connections, a lack of "internet identification", and the costs associated with finding and prosecuting pirates and the subsequent punishments that make the costs extremely high for low payout. What I see time and time again from anti-DRM people is how easy the competition makes it (although in today's streaming age, most of the biggest competitors use DRM). What I don't see is anti-DRM people coming up with solutions to prevent theft or make punishment worthwhile to pursue. It's a different class of product. You can only steal the ONE car I own, but you can take my music that I spent say $5000 making and give it to 1 billion people so that it's unlikely I can recoup my costs. But more importantly if I say I want to be paid for you to listen to my music then that's my inherent right. You don't have a right to listen to it.
The solution is to compete in value to the customer. You can't compete in asking price with someone essentially offering the product for free. That is intrinsically impossible. What you can do is offer an added value. Convenience, for example. People are very willing to pay for convenience. Apple based its success in the early 2000 on the "just works" philosophy that they managed to pull off very convincingly. Apple products were quite a bit more expensive than comparable Windows PCs, and they also suffered from a smaller software library, but the added convenience and hassle-free usability meant that they sold very well. Then there's also the "bling" aspect, also something you could learn from Apple. People want to show off, and being able to show off, so all you have to do is make buying your product "cool" and associate copying it with being poor and generally a negative style image. Make your product fashionable, but of course only when people actually buy it. Maybe add a few cool cosmetic features now and then for paying customers that can prove they bought a genuine product, and make sure that the game community actually honors this. It usually he
Don't get me wrong, I'm very much for a sensible work-reward balance, but what we have here is nothing short of greed. Someone saw a get-rich-quick scheme and wanted in. With all due respect, that's not "empowering the working people", that's just someone who saw some greedy bastard getting rich and wanted to get rich himself, and didn't give a shit about "the working people" and all that.
How does pirating a product devalue it? If the pirated product is passed off as a genuine one (as is the case with articles like clothing or other fashion accessories) and of inferior quality, the brand value gets damaged, this is correct. But that's also not the case with illegal distribution of software, in which the people involved usually know that they do not use the genuine product.
The product is not any less valuable. When a million people copy your game, its value to me does not change. Either it is worth the asking price or it is not. Whether a product is offered at a different price only matters if the conditions it is offered at are identical. Where I am from, you can get internet access for pretty much any price between about 5 bucks a month and about 200 bucks a month. The product is at the surface identical: Access to the internet. With closer inspection you will notice that not only the speed offered is different but also the SLA behind it, ranging from "if it doesn't work, sucks to be you" to "it works within 5 minutes of you telling us it doesn't or we pay anything you want".
Just because someone else is offering a product cheaper does not make your product any less valuable. Someone getting internet access for 5 bucks would not have paid 70 for yours just 'cause yours is faster or has a higher availability rating. Still you'll notice that people pay 70 bucks for better, more reliable and more comfortable access.
If you now go ahead and make this 70 bucks product less valuable, e.g. by injecting ads, crappy tech support or requiring people to allow other customers of yours to use their wifi access point (believe it or not...), people might consider moving away from your service. Not because of the 70 bucks, but because the value they associate with your product is now lower than what they gave it without your added limitations.
If DRM is a fear reaction of not getting a ROI, it fails miserably at this. Because if anything, it makes sure that your ROI is lower.
The value of a product is by definition what someone else is willing to pay for it. Not your asking price. Not even how valuable you consider it. I treasure the wedding ring of my grandmother and wouldn't sell it for millions, even though the average jeweler would probably only pay a few 100 bucks for it. And that is actually the price I could sell it for, not a dime more.
The argument many companies field for DRM is that without, their product becomes easy to copy and hence worthless because it can be multiplied at the whim of the one holding it. What they fail to understand is what they're competing with. They are competing with the product being offered for free. Not legally, true, but for free. You cannot compete with 'free' on price. Unless you'd be willing to pay people to take your product, something that has rarely been done in history, at least without the added requirement to actually use it and pay that way in some other fashion.
What you can compete on is convenience and value. DRM now devalues your product, in the eyes of the customer. With DRM, I cannot easily transport it from my laptop to my desktop, I have to enter keys or insert some physical medium somewhere or, in its worst incarnation, I have to be online all the time and maybe can't even play sensibly the first few weeks after launch because the servers the DRM wants to connect to are overtaxed. These are all problems a cracked version does not have.
A cracked version of even the most fiendishly DRMified product can be used on any computer at any time by any person without jumping through any hoops. At worst it may even be that the buyer of a genuine copy cannot play because the DRM-Servers are not responding while someone who did not buy the game but instead got it from an illegal source can.
This is the main danger of DRM to your product. Because here is what happens: People talk with each other. User A who bought your product, and now cannot play, talks with User B who copied it, and who will show User A how to get a copy himself. User A doesn't even feel guilty because not only did he pay good money for a product he cannot use, he feels cheated by you and has exactly zero problem with a potentially existing conscience copying the game. He paid for it, so according to his moral attitude (and, frankly, probably almost everyone else's too) he has the right to use that game. This is how he learns that copying a game isn't that difficult.
Next time he omits the step that is of no value to him. I.e. buying the game that he then has to copy anyway to actually play it.
DRM damages your product in the eyes of the one paying for it, i.e. the one whose opinion about the value of a product actually matters. Whether you consider it more valuable with DRM is irrelevant.
Steam, GOG and various other online distribution channels have proven that people are willing to pay for games delivered with convenience and hassle-free. Knowing that you get the game you want quickly and easily, not having to store it locally while you don't play it, being able to transfer save games easily between computers and even to other players, a centralized modding repository and so on, these things are of value to people, and they convince them that they're better off paying a few bucks for a game rather than downloading what hopefully is the game, fiddling with it to make it work and then spend some more hours trying to figure out how to add mods or integrate someone else's save games.
Add value to your products and people will buy them. Remove value and people will find other ways to get them in a more valuable version.
Why does one of the best analysis of the whole mess come from an AC? You have a faint idea how many are actually going to read this now? Log in next time!
Because this is spot on. The hallmark of a bubble-bust is usually when mass media reporting starts dragging in the uninformed who think they could get a share of the cake. From then on, it's a cycle of greed, fear and greed until the inevitable bubble-popping.
I dare say that you can even go so far as to kill any market that way, simply by hyping it in the press, getting uninformed people to invest in it, inflate it past any sane levels and when the main investors exit simply because they know that the market cannot deliver at the level it has been inflated to, the panic sales set in and you can see the market crumble, crash and burn. Even if it would have been a healthy one if it had been allowed to grow slowly and steadily.
The reason why it takes a while for large sums is protection against money laundering. Without that in place some of the powers that are will quickly come down upon you and end your financial game.
No, know what you're doing instead of jumping a bandwagon you don't even remotely understand the mechanics behind.
I want to get rich like a CEO, so I go and create a business without knowing the first thing about running one. Then, after the inevitable crash, I come crying why I can't use the markets to my advantage like Musk and Bezos and that the bad ruling class wants to keep me down and it totally isn't my fault.
With maybe the difference that gold, platinum, silver and the rest of the non-ferrous metals actually do have a value due to them actually having some useful application.
That's basically the business model of internet startups. Build something, then hope that one of the big players actually thinks it has value and buys it before funding runs out because you have exactly zero idea how to monetize it.
Facebook, like every social media platform, has one crucial function: It can connect like minded people. Actually, that's its primary function. Now, while this seems quite positive on the surface, it can be quite detrimental to us as a society too. Because it also allows very unsavory and outright crazy people to connect. Which you might notice in the more recent skyrocketing number of conspiracy theories being peddled loudly.
What does this have to do with each other?
Let's say you have an uncommon, unpopular or outright illegal position or opinion. In a "normal" society, you'd feel quite alone with your opinion because nobody shares it. This changes when you're able to connect with like minded individuals who share your twisted world view. Suddenly you're no longer alone, moreover, you feel that your position is verified as true and right, you feel vindicated. And of course you start living in this echo chamber of like minded people who keep telling you that you're right and that your "crazy" opinion is not crazy at all but that everyone else is crazy.
This works for every kind of fringe ideology. It has worked for religion for centuries without the internet, but the internet gives other insane ideas the same level of self perpetuating reinforcement. From religion to third wave feminism, from white supremacy to black lives matters. And yes, from contrails to flat earth.
We were able to rescue your workers and avoid the flames from reaching any property not belonging to Verizon, unfortunately we were unable to keep the main building from burning to the ground. Our water supply was throttled, it seems, and we had to prioritize resources.
Slashdot Mirror
What "24/7 open borders propaganda"? Could you point to any media outlet that celebrates the arrival of refugees?
Lemme guess: That's what's being circulated in your social media echo chamber?
At least as long as it doesn't keep them from playing the game...
Value of a good doesn't necessarily equate to the end cost of the good. It's a factor, but I have the right to set whatever price I want on an item. Your only right as a consumer is to buy or not buy it. That's it.
Slight correction. Asking price is what you mean, not value. And yes, the asking price is only influenced by manufacturing cost insofar that the cost establishes the minimum asking price (barring any cross financing), since selling below would mean that not producing is more sensible. The customer assesses the value of a product and compares the value he attributes to the product with the asking price. If the value I give a good or service is higher than the asking price, I buy. If it isn't, I don't.
This is a shit example. That diamond in that wedding ring (or any modern one) costs the De Beers company a handful of dollars. They sell it to you for vast sums more. They do this partially by artificially restricting the availability of natural diamonds, calling lab created diamonds less valuable, and telling women that your man doesn't love you if he doesn't give you a piece of a shiny rock - specifically the TYPE of rock that De Beers says is valuable.
Again, value is what the potential buyer gives a good or service. You, as the seller, try to find an asking price that allows for the maximum profit without going over the value the buyer attributes to the item, because if you ask for more than he considered it worth, he will not buy. Whether I (or for the matter DeBeers) says it's valuable means jack shit if the buyer doesn't see it that way. DeBeers apparently managed to convince people that the value they pretend those rocks to have is correct, so people now attribute that value to those rocks. Actually, it's even likely that DeBeers, as the seller, considers the rocks less valuable, or they would not want to sell them at the price they offer them at.
They understand it. They also understand anonymous VPNs, TOR, shared network connections, a lack of "internet identification", and the costs associated with finding and prosecuting pirates and the subsequent punishments that make the costs extremely high for low payout. What I see time and time again from anti-DRM people is how easy the competition makes it (although in today's streaming age, most of the biggest competitors use DRM). What I don't see is anti-DRM people coming up with solutions to prevent theft or make punishment worthwhile to pursue. It's a different class of product. You can only steal the ONE car I own, but you can take my music that I spent say $5000 making and give it to 1 billion people so that it's unlikely I can recoup my costs. But more importantly if I say I want to be paid for you to listen to my music then that's my inherent right. You don't have a right to listen to it.
The solution is to compete in value to the customer. You can't compete in asking price with someone essentially offering the product for free. That is intrinsically impossible. What you can do is offer an added value. Convenience, for example. People are very willing to pay for convenience. Apple based its success in the early 2000 on the "just works" philosophy that they managed to pull off very convincingly. Apple products were quite a bit more expensive than comparable Windows PCs, and they also suffered from a smaller software library, but the added convenience and hassle-free usability meant that they sold very well. Then there's also the "bling" aspect, also something you could learn from Apple. People want to show off, and being able to show off, so all you have to do is make buying your product "cool" and associate copying it with being poor and generally a negative style image. Make your product fashionable, but of course only when people actually buy it. Maybe add a few cool cosmetic features now and then for paying customers that can prove they bought a genuine product, and make sure that the game community actually honors this. It usually he
Don't get me wrong, I'm very much for a sensible work-reward balance, but what we have here is nothing short of greed. Someone saw a get-rich-quick scheme and wanted in. With all due respect, that's not "empowering the working people", that's just someone who saw some greedy bastard getting rich and wanted to get rich himself, and didn't give a shit about "the working people" and all that.
How does pirating a product devalue it? If the pirated product is passed off as a genuine one (as is the case with articles like clothing or other fashion accessories) and of inferior quality, the brand value gets damaged, this is correct. But that's also not the case with illegal distribution of software, in which the people involved usually know that they do not use the genuine product.
The product is not any less valuable. When a million people copy your game, its value to me does not change. Either it is worth the asking price or it is not. Whether a product is offered at a different price only matters if the conditions it is offered at are identical. Where I am from, you can get internet access for pretty much any price between about 5 bucks a month and about 200 bucks a month. The product is at the surface identical: Access to the internet. With closer inspection you will notice that not only the speed offered is different but also the SLA behind it, ranging from "if it doesn't work, sucks to be you" to "it works within 5 minutes of you telling us it doesn't or we pay anything you want".
Just because someone else is offering a product cheaper does not make your product any less valuable. Someone getting internet access for 5 bucks would not have paid 70 for yours just 'cause yours is faster or has a higher availability rating. Still you'll notice that people pay 70 bucks for better, more reliable and more comfortable access.
If you now go ahead and make this 70 bucks product less valuable, e.g. by injecting ads, crappy tech support or requiring people to allow other customers of yours to use their wifi access point (believe it or not...), people might consider moving away from your service. Not because of the 70 bucks, but because the value they associate with your product is now lower than what they gave it without your added limitations.
If DRM is a fear reaction of not getting a ROI, it fails miserably at this. Because if anything, it makes sure that your ROI is lower.
That's approximately 10% more than what you have with Bitcoins.
The value of a product is by definition what someone else is willing to pay for it. Not your asking price. Not even how valuable you consider it. I treasure the wedding ring of my grandmother and wouldn't sell it for millions, even though the average jeweler would probably only pay a few 100 bucks for it. And that is actually the price I could sell it for, not a dime more.
The argument many companies field for DRM is that without, their product becomes easy to copy and hence worthless because it can be multiplied at the whim of the one holding it. What they fail to understand is what they're competing with. They are competing with the product being offered for free. Not legally, true, but for free. You cannot compete with 'free' on price. Unless you'd be willing to pay people to take your product, something that has rarely been done in history, at least without the added requirement to actually use it and pay that way in some other fashion.
What you can compete on is convenience and value. DRM now devalues your product, in the eyes of the customer. With DRM, I cannot easily transport it from my laptop to my desktop, I have to enter keys or insert some physical medium somewhere or, in its worst incarnation, I have to be online all the time and maybe can't even play sensibly the first few weeks after launch because the servers the DRM wants to connect to are overtaxed. These are all problems a cracked version does not have.
A cracked version of even the most fiendishly DRMified product can be used on any computer at any time by any person without jumping through any hoops. At worst it may even be that the buyer of a genuine copy cannot play because the DRM-Servers are not responding while someone who did not buy the game but instead got it from an illegal source can.
This is the main danger of DRM to your product. Because here is what happens: People talk with each other. User A who bought your product, and now cannot play, talks with User B who copied it, and who will show User A how to get a copy himself. User A doesn't even feel guilty because not only did he pay good money for a product he cannot use, he feels cheated by you and has exactly zero problem with a potentially existing conscience copying the game. He paid for it, so according to his moral attitude (and, frankly, probably almost everyone else's too) he has the right to use that game. This is how he learns that copying a game isn't that difficult.
Next time he omits the step that is of no value to him. I.e. buying the game that he then has to copy anyway to actually play it.
DRM damages your product in the eyes of the one paying for it, i.e. the one whose opinion about the value of a product actually matters. Whether you consider it more valuable with DRM is irrelevant.
Steam, GOG and various other online distribution channels have proven that people are willing to pay for games delivered with convenience and hassle-free. Knowing that you get the game you want quickly and easily, not having to store it locally while you don't play it, being able to transfer save games easily between computers and even to other players, a centralized modding repository and so on, these things are of value to people, and they convince them that they're better off paying a few bucks for a game rather than downloading what hopefully is the game, fiddling with it to make it work and then spend some more hours trying to figure out how to add mods or integrate someone else's save games.
Add value to your products and people will buy them. Remove value and people will find other ways to get them in a more valuable version.
No. People selling at 20k is smart. Greed is people buying at 20k.
Who can sleep with most of his house's mortgage invested in bitcoins?
Why does one of the best analysis of the whole mess come from an AC? You have a faint idea how many are actually going to read this now? Log in next time!
Because this is spot on. The hallmark of a bubble-bust is usually when mass media reporting starts dragging in the uninformed who think they could get a share of the cake. From then on, it's a cycle of greed, fear and greed until the inevitable bubble-popping.
I dare say that you can even go so far as to kill any market that way, simply by hyping it in the press, getting uninformed people to invest in it, inflate it past any sane levels and when the main investors exit simply because they know that the market cannot deliver at the level it has been inflated to, the panic sales set in and you can see the market crumble, crash and burn. Even if it would have been a healthy one if it had been allowed to grow slowly and steadily.
The reason why it takes a while for large sums is protection against money laundering. Without that in place some of the powers that are will quickly come down upon you and end your financial game.
No, know what you're doing instead of jumping a bandwagon you don't even remotely understand the mechanics behind.
I want to get rich like a CEO, so I go and create a business without knowing the first thing about running one. Then, after the inevitable crash, I come crying why I can't use the markets to my advantage like Musk and Bezos and that the bad ruling class wants to keep me down and it totally isn't my fault.
With maybe the difference that gold, platinum, silver and the rest of the non-ferrous metals actually do have a value due to them actually having some useful application.
The value of a commodity is what someone else is willing to pay for it.
Are you willing to pay 6 grand for a bitcoin? If not, why do you think someone else is?
Bitcoins is a bit like pumpkins. Pumpkins are also a great investment, but you want to sell before Halloween.
No, it works like a casino. And our casino-style capitalism. Anyone can win. But not everyone.
That's basically the business model of internet startups. Build something, then hope that one of the big players actually thinks it has value and buys it before funding runs out because you have exactly zero idea how to monetize it.
lgbtqiz
Gesundheit.
What?
Facebook, like every social media platform, has one crucial function: It can connect like minded people. Actually, that's its primary function. Now, while this seems quite positive on the surface, it can be quite detrimental to us as a society too. Because it also allows very unsavory and outright crazy people to connect. Which you might notice in the more recent skyrocketing number of conspiracy theories being peddled loudly.
What does this have to do with each other?
Let's say you have an uncommon, unpopular or outright illegal position or opinion. In a "normal" society, you'd feel quite alone with your opinion because nobody shares it. This changes when you're able to connect with like minded individuals who share your twisted world view. Suddenly you're no longer alone, moreover, you feel that your position is verified as true and right, you feel vindicated. And of course you start living in this echo chamber of like minded people who keep telling you that you're right and that your "crazy" opinion is not crazy at all but that everyone else is crazy.
This works for every kind of fringe ideology. It has worked for religion for centuries without the internet, but the internet gives other insane ideas the same level of self perpetuating reinforcement. From religion to third wave feminism, from white supremacy to black lives matters. And yes, from contrails to flat earth.
Ok, but why stop there?
People joining pyramid game late are taking heavy losses while those at the top cash out.
We were able to rescue your workers and avoid the flames from reaching any property not belonging to Verizon, unfortunately we were unable to keep the main building from burning to the ground. Our water supply was throttled, it seems, and we had to prioritize resources.
That's awesome, where is that?
Nah, that one is boring. Do the one with the politicians raping kids in pizza hut.
To be honest, I don't really remember the drivel, I just enjoy it.